Survey of Grown Unschoolers II: Going on to College

Can people with no K-12 schooling go to college and do well there? If so, how?

This is the second in a series of four posts concerning a survey of grown unschoolers that Gina Riley and I have recently conducted. The first post presented a definition of unschooling and an overview of the methods and the statistical findings of our study. Please look back at that post to review them.

Unlike so many others in the general population, most unschoolers do not consider college admission, or college graduation, or high grades in college, to be in any general sense a measure of life success. Nor do we. Our main concern in asking about college in this study was simply to find out about the experiences of those who, for whatever reason, did choose to go to college. These questions have practical ramifications, because many potential unschoolers would be reluctant to take the unschooling route if it precluded the possibility of college and therefore the possibility of careers that, at least today, more or less require college as a stepping-stone.

To learn about their college experiences, we asked the following as Question 5 of the survey: “Please describe briefly any formal higher education you have experienced, such as community college/college/and graduate school. How did you get into college without having a high school diploma? How did you adjust from being unschooled to being enrolled in a more formal type of educational experience? Please list any degrees you have obtained or degrees you are currently working toward.”

In this series of posts I use the term schooling to refer to attendance at an out-of-home school, homeschooling to refer to academic lessons at home that are supervised or enforced by a parent, and unschooling to refer to the situation where children are not sent to school and are not homeschooled (by the definition just given). In other contexts, and for legal purposes, unschooling is considered to be a branch of homeschooling—and in some of the quotes, below, respondents use the term "homeschooling" as an umbrella term that includes unschooling—but for purposes of clarity I use the term homeschooling, here, in a more limited way that does not include unschooling. Again, for more on the definition of unschooling, for the purpose of this study, look back at the previous post.

As noted in the previous post, 62 (83 percent) of the 75 grown unschoolers who responded to our survey had gone on to some form of higher education, and 33 (44 percent) had completed a bachelor’s degree or higher or were currently full-time students in a bachelor’s program. The other 29 who pursued higher education most often did so to gain particular knowledge or a license related to their vocational interest, for which they did not need a bachelor’s degree. Also as noted in the previous post, the likelihood of pursuing a bachelor’s degree was inversely related to the amount of previous schooling: Fifty-eight percent of those in the always-unschooled group had pursued a bachelor’s degree compared with 44 percent and 29 percent, respectively, in the other two groups (look back at the previous post for details).

The always-unschooled group not only had the highest percentage who went on to a bachelor’s degree, but also the highest percentage who did not go on to any higher education. Indeed, of the 24 respondents in that group, 14 went on to a bachelor’s degree and 6 did not pursue any form of higher education. The latter generally said that they did not need formal education to learn what they wanted to know or to pursue their chosen careers. For example, one wrote, “I’ve continued to unschool into adulthood and will continue throughout my life. I think internships and apprenticeships would be the natural extension of unschooling into the traditional workplace. If I become interested in a field that seems like college would be a good resource for, I would look into it—but I would still consider it part of the unschooling journey, which for me simply means following curiosity wherever it leads.” Another simply stated, “As an adult, I realize that unschooling helped me see that college wasn’t necessary to have a successful, fulfilling life”.

I also reported in the previous post that the most common route to admission to a bachelor’s degree program, for our respondents, was to take community college courses—typically beginning around age 16—and then use that transcript to gain college admission. Twenty-one of the 33 had taken that route. Most went on to college without any sort of official high school diploma, but seven reported that they had received a GED by taking the appropriate test and three said that they had received a diploma through an online procedure.

The great majority of respondents who went on to college reported no difficulty doing the academic work. Indeed, most said they were at an academic advantage, primarily because of their high motivation and their high capacity for self-initiative, self-direction, and self-control.

The best way to convey the college experiences of the respondents is through their own words. The rest of this post consists of quotations from the surveys. The quotations are selected, but are quite representative of the whole sample, with the exception of two who described difficulties with their unschooling and pursuit of higher education and whose experiences will be discussed in the fourth post in this series. The themes that emerged from the sample as a whole are these: (1) Getting into college was generally not particularly difficult for these unschoolers; (2) The academic adjustment to college was generally quite smooth for them; (3) Most felt advantaged because of their high self-motivation and capacity for self-direction; and (4) The most frequent complaints were about the lack of motivation and intellectual curiosity among their college classmates, the constricted social life of college, and, in a few cases, constraints imposed by the curriculum or grading system.

To preserve the respondents’ anonymity, I have identified each only by gender, age at the time of filling out the questionnaire, and extent to which the person had been unschooled. I’ve also removed potentially identifying information from the quotations, especially the names of the colleges attended. The preponderance of women in the sample below reflects the high ratio of women compared to men who responded to our survey (see previous post). I have chosen quotations primarily from among those who had the least schooling or homeschooling before college, and I've ordered them in such a way that those with no K-12 schooling or homeschooling are first.

Age 20, no K-12 schooling or homeschooling. This woman, at age 20, had already earned a BA degree and had gained what, for her, was an ideal job in theatre production. She had taken some community college courses between age 13 and 16 and then transferred to a four-year BA program at her state university, which she completed in two and one-fourth years, graduating summa cum laude. She wrote, “It was not a rough adjustment for me. I found that because I had not been in school before attending college, I was much less burnt out than my peers and had a very fresh perspective. I learned basic academic skills (essay composition, research, etc.) very quickly… I struggled some with time management, but eventually developed a means of staying organized.”

Age 21, no K-12 schooling or homeschooling. This young man was in his third year of a four-year BA program, majoring in philosophy at a selective Canadian university, about to declare honors status and with plans to pursue a master’s in philosophy. In explaining how he was admitted, he wrote, “I set an appointment to talk with someone in the admissions department, to find out what I would need to do to apply as an unschooler. After I talked briefly about myself, my achievements, and my style of education, and after he read a sample of my writing, he said ‘I can't see any reason why you shouldn't be here’, and proceeded to hand me the forms to become a student.”

Concerning adjustment, he wrote, “It was a bit hard to adjust to the amount of skimming-over that many introductory classes do: I can't bear it when ideas are left unexplored. Mainly because of the depth of the material covered, I've found that my best grades, and some of my best work, have come from 4000-level courses. I've always learned in a passionate way and don't want to stop the flow of an idea until it runs its course.”

Age 24, no K-12 schooling or homeschooling. This woman, who had received a BA from a highly selective liberal arts college, wrote, “In contrast to [my classmates], I found great inspiration from my teachers. At [name of college deleted] the teachers must also be practitioners in their fields of study, so I was working with people who were actively interested and participating in their areas of expertise as a teacher and as an actor, writer, director, translator, and so on. Having someone with such a wealth of knowledge looking over my shoulder at the work I was doing was revolutionary. It was not something I wish I had earlier, not something I felt had been lacking my whole life, but it was something that inspired me for my four years at school.”

At one point in her college career this young woman was asked to lead a meeting of students in order to provide feedback to the instructor of a course. She wrote, “I discovered that people wanted the teacher to tell them what to think. ‘l wish he’d told us what to think when we read Macbeth’ someone said. ‘I wish he’d let us know what he wanted us to do in our Hearts of Darkness essays’ and on and on. It had never, ever occurred to me to ask someone else to tell me what to think when I read something.”

This respondent also wrote that the biggest drawback to college, for her, was the lack of a normal, age-mixed social life—with people who are not all students. To achieve that, she joined the local Unitarian Universalist church where she served as religious educator while still a student.

Age 24, no K-12 schooling or homeschooling. This woman, who was currently a full-time student working for a master’s degree in English, wrote: “I began attending a community college when I was 16 and enjoyed every second of it. I did not feel as though I had to adjust to anything. After my first psychology class, which was the first time I had to take notes during a class, I went right home and began typing and organizing my notes. I continued going part time for two years until I was 18. The community college accepted my diploma, which I created myself and my parents signed, along with my transcript, which I also created. I turned my interests and activities into ‘courses’ for the transcript and included a list of books that I had read over the last 4 years.”

“When I began looking for a four-year university to transfer to, my decision not to take the SATs had a minor effect on my choices for schools. One school refused to even open my application without SAT scores, even though I had written them a letter detailing my success at the college level for the last three years. I chose a university that allowed me to register as a part time student for my first semester and then transfer into a full-time program without having to provide SAT scores.”

Age 29, no K-12 schooling or homeschooling. This woman, who had graduated with high honors from a selective private women’s college and then gone on to a master’s degree, wrote, “On top of accepting me, they put me into their freshman honors class. I definitely felt strange going into a formal school, especially being in an honors program. I spent long hours studying and doing my homework—way more work than my classmates were doing. After I got straight A's for the first half of my first semester I started to relax a little more, and I realized I was working way too hard. So I learned how to learn like my fellow classmates were—by memorizing everything just before a test. I still kept getting straight A's but was doing hardly any work at all. Eventually I learned how to balance it—actually delving into material I enjoyed and memorizing the stuff I wasn't interested in. It wasn't hard; it mostly just made me really appreciate the fact that I hadn't been in school my whole life.”

“I definitely experienced a [social] transition in college. I wasn't into frat parties, drinking heavily and the like, so my first year/first two years I was a bit of a loner, with only a few friends. My last year in school I finally started drinking and going to house parties, so I ‘fit in’ a little better and got a wider group of ‘friends.’ I realized this was how everyone else in college was socializing and it felt off to me, not genuine or a way to really make lasting connections. Out of school I returned to how I had always functioned socially, and lo and behold, that was what everyone else was doing. I met friends through my jobs, through theatres I worked in, through other friends, and at coffee shops.”

Age 29, no K-12 schooling or homeschooling. This woman, who had earned a bachelor’s degree in fine arts at an unnamed college, wrote, “I did have a high school diploma. There would have been greater challenges without that, but for me the transition was logistically really easy. Despite the completely unschooled nature of my upbringing, my mother had our home registered as a private school with the state of CA, so on paper I looked ‘normal’ in the system.

"I went to Community College part time between the ages of 16 and 19 years old. I transferred to a four year school, which I attended for three years before receiving my BFA with High Distinction at 22 years old. I loved college—it stands out as one of the most focused and fulfilling periods of my young life! When I began community college, I was younger than other students, and I was concerned that I would feel behind, but I wasn't. I didn't like taking tests, and I still feel a lot of anxiety about tests to this day, but I excelled in most ways and graduated with a high GPA.”

“Growing up, I understood we were outside of the norm, and that was met by kids and adults alike with a lot of skepticism at times. Despite my mom’s great confidence, I was concerned about whether I had what it took to succeed in the ‘real world.’ College was the time in my life where I confronted the unknown and decided I was probably OK!”

Age 30, no K-12 schooling or homeschooling. This man took classes at a local state college beginning at age 16, and then transferred to a small, selective, progressive private college where he completed a BS in conservation biology and ecology. After that, he earned an MS at a state university and completed one year of a Ph.D. program at another state university, before taking a leave of absence from school because of a serious illness. Concerning adjustment, he reported no difficulty with the academic work, but objected to the constraints imposed by the system of evaluation. He wrote, “Even the requirement-free environment of [name of college omitted] felt stifling to me (e.g. its perverse grading incentive to avoid one's own directions within a field in favor of the professor's predilections, formal academic bias to the near exclusion of experiential learning, and emphasis on tangible academic products rather than learning/applying process), and grad school has been many times worse (not only in terms of more structured and formalized educational paradigms, but also of lower-level educational opportunities).” He nevertheless plans to return to the Ph.D. program when his illness is brought under control, as he is committed to a career aimed at restoring and maintaining biodiversity.

Age 32, no K-12 schooling or homeschooling. This woman, now a mom on the brink of unschooling her own children, wrote: “I took a course in Emergency Medicine and worked a couple of odd jobs while I researched college options, selected my preferred school, and went about the application process. I was scholarshipped for a large chunk of my undergraduate education due to a portfolio that I assembled and my college interviews. Applying for college didn't seem to be too difficult without an official diploma, because I had SAT scores to submit and high-school transcripts that my mom prepared from all of her years of journaling our unschooling exploits. I remember being very restless for the first one to two years of college. I didn't feel very challenged by the core classes I was enrolled in and was itching to move on to my major and minor classes. College was fun, but I was stunned to realize that the majority of the other students didn't work or pursue any other areas of their lives apart from their studies and partying. I supported myself throughout my four-year degree typically working at least two jobs while taking well above the minimum class/load requirements so that I could graduate on time. Two years into my degree I took a full time job in the creative department of the local newspaper, where I continued to work after graduation.”

Age 35, no K-12 schooling or homeschooling. This woman, who had earned a BA at a small progressive college and then a master’s degree, wrote, “Through my whole college experience I balked at students who didn't do the work, even in the courses that were less than desirable or exciting for me. I think my educational background set me up for thinking ‘why are you there, if you aren't going to participate?’ This was frustrating for me to see. For I have always chosen myself to pursue education, and even though this personal choice meant that there were some courses I had to take that I wasn't excited about, I still knew what my motivation was for being there. Over time I have learned that these fellow students who were frustrating to be around had been exposed to a drastically different relationship with learning and education.”

Age 19, no K-12 schooling or homeschooling past second grade. This young woman had been diagnosed with dyslexia when she was in second grade at school and was taken out of school because of her unhappiness there. As an unschooler, she learned to read at her own pace and in her own way. Later, she was tested and diagnosed with other learning disabilities, but these did not hold her back. During her last two years of unschooling, she took community college courses and then transferred to a bachelor’s degree program at a selective private liberal arts college. She wrote, “I enrolled at [name of college omitted], where I just completed my freshman year. I maintained a 3.9 GPA through the whole year, and I am returning there in the fall.

"I think that unschooling actually prepared me better for college than most of my peers, because I already had a wealth of experience with self-directed study. I knew how to motivate myself, manage my time, and complete assignments without the structure that most traditional students are accustomed to. While most of my peers were floundering and unable to meet deadlines, I remained on top of my work because I have always been an independent learner. I know how to figure things out for myself and how to get help when I need it. While I struggled to adjust in the beginning, it was purely due to the difficulties caused by my learning disabilities. By the end of the year I had overcome my struggles and excelled in school. I am currently working on my BA in English from [name of college omitted], and after that I intend to go on for a Masters in Library Science.”

Age 24, no K-12 schooling or homeschooling past second grade. This man, more so than most of the others, found that he had to jump through some hoops to get into community college, as a stepping stone to a bachelor’s program at a selective state university, but had no difficulties adapting academically. He wrote, “At first I did not want to attend college. When I graduated from homeschooling/unschooling in 2005, I worked at a gym selling gym memberships for two years. Ultimately I figured out that I needed to go to college so I attended a local community college. It was difficult getting in without a high school diploma, and basically I had to go to the county school board office to obtain a 'homeschool completion affidavit' to prove to the college that I actually finished the 12th grade. After a bunch of red tape, they accepted it. Since I never took the SAT, ACT or other standardized test for college prior to enrolling in the community college, I had to take a placement test before I could enroll in classes. After all of this was out of the way, I was viewed as a regular student.

"I went on to graduate from [name of college omitted] with my Associate’s degree and a 4.00 GPA. Then I attended [name of university omitted] and obtained a Bachelor’s degree, also with a 4.00 GPA. Most recently I just finished my Master’s degree at [name of university omitted].”

Age 24, no K-12 schooling or homeschooling past second grade. This woman, who earned a BA from a large state university, wrote, “There is an adjustment period going into ‘school’ from unschooling, but you also have the huge advantage of not being burned out and hating school already. Learning is still something you look forward to.” This respondent went on to say that she received nearly all A’s and then a full scholarship to law school, and added: “I'm not trying to brag, so much as prove that unschooling works. We took a lot of crap from friends, relatives, and strangers during the entire time we were unschooling. So now, I like having the credentials to prove that unschooling is a legitimate way to educate and indeed, in my book, the preferred way to educate.”

Age 26, no K-12 schooling or homeschooling past second grade. This woman, who had graduated with honors from a highly selective liberal arts college, wrote, “The transition was a difficult one for me, not for the academics, but for the feeling of being trapped within a system. The college bubble felt tiny to me and I was in a constant state of simmering frustration at being told even simple things like which classes to take and when. As someone who had made those choices myself for years, I felt disrespected that it was assumed that I didn't know what level of study I was ready for. It took most of the first year for me to come to a place of acceptance, remembering that this, too, was a choice that I made that I could change if I wanted to. I never loved college like many people do and never felt as free as I had before college or in the time after I graduated.” This respondent subsequently attended graduate school in a medically related field and reported that to be a better experience, because of the real-world setting of the clinical work.

Age 35, no K-12 schooling or homeschooling past fourth grade. This woman, who had gained a degree from a highly selective liberal arts college, wrote, “I applied to eight colleges and was accepted at all of them [in 1995]…I interviewed at all eight colleges; for most of them I was their first ‘homeschool/unschooled’ applicant. Several colleges told me I was accepted at the conclusion of the interviews, right after they informed me that I was ‘surprisingly’ well-spoken and bright. I did take (and did very well on) both the SATs and the ACTs, which probably offset the lack of transcripts.”

“The transition was fairly easy, though I was homesick. I think college is a lot like unschooling—you take classes that interest you, do most of the work on your own, and are responsible for getting it done and turned in on time. You are really responsible for your own education!”

“From [name of college deleted] I received a BA in both computer science and mathematics. It proves something: I never had any formal math training beyond 5th grade, but ended up tutoring other students in Calculus 1, 2 and 3. I never had a computer of my own until my junior year of college, but majored in computer science where I wrote extensive computer programs, and programmed my own robot.” This person then went on to a BS and Masters’ in nursing, became a nurse practitioner, and, at the time of the survey, was contemplating going back to school for a doctorate.

Age 32, no K-12 schooling or homeschooling past seventh grade; mix of schooling and homeschooling before that. This woman, who had received a bachelor’s degree from an Ivy League university, was a mother unschooling her own children, a yoga instructor, and a student training to do yoga therapy when she filled out the survey. Concerning college admission and adjustment to college, she wrote, “When I was 15, I wanted to take community college courses. At that time, dual enrollment of homeschooled students wasn't really accepted, so I was told I needed to get a GED to be allowed to enroll. Although I think it disappointed my parents for me to get my GED, it has helped to have that paper that shows I completed some sort of high school education. That said, I refuse to take standardized tests now (because I believe they aren't a measure of intelligence or even what a student has learned), so I did complete my associate's degree before I attempted to transfer to a four-year university (some schools will accept a two-year degree in place of SAT/ACT scores.) I graduated from [the Ivy League University] with my BA in psychology in 2003. I think unschooling helped me adjust to college; I was so used to being able to study whatever I wanted that it seemed natural to take classes that interested me. And unschooling also follows the premise that if a child has a goal, they'll learn whatever they need to in order to meet it. For instance, I don't like math, but I knew I would need to learn it in order to graduate. So that's what I did.”

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As I noted in the first post on this study, we must be cautious in interpreting the results of this survey. By necessity, as we had no way of forcing people into the study, the sample here is a group of grown unschoolers who chose to participate, and they may well be among those unschoolers who are happiest with their experiences and most eager to tell about them. However, at minimum, we can conclude this: The college option is very definitely available to unschoolers. Those who want to go to college and take the steps required to get in have no particular difficulty getting in or doing well once there. Moreover, the similarities in responses within this relatively diverse sample suggests a certain common groud of experience. The grown unschoolers who went on to college had good reasons in their own minds for doing so, did not want to waste their time there, seemed to work harder and achieve more than did their schooled classmates, and generally felt advantaged because of their previous experiences controlling their own lives and learning.

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What are your thoughts and questions about this aspect of our survey? What unschooling experiences or college experiences—positive or negative—have you had that you are you willing to share? This blog is a forum for discussion, and your stories, comments, and questions are valued and treated with respect by me and other readers. As always, I prefer if you post your thoughts and questions here rather than send them to me by private email. By putting them here, you share with other readers, not just with me. I read all comments and try to respond to all serious questions, if I feel I have something useful to add to what others have said. Of course, if you have something to say that truly applies only to you and me, then send me an email.

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For much more about the human nature of self-determined education, see Free to Learn.

I believe there was a comment on a previous post that advocated using the term self directed learning instead of unschooling.

I think the rationale behind this was that people end to assume schooling means boring hard necessary work, so unschooling must be the opposite of schooling, lounging around and doing nothing, i.e. what schooled children do when they are given a break from school.
If words are just to communicate ideas, I think we should start using self directed learning, or something like it, as opposed to unschooling.

I have unschooled my child for the past decade, and I agree that the word is seen by many in a pejorative light. Self-directed learning is a far better term.

Unfortunately, I am beginning to believe some names come about not in well-reasoned ways but rather in many circumstances to clearly point out that something is atypical and not normal and/or common. These terms can ultimately be uplifting or derogative. The same is experienced by bright children who are called gifted. The term gifted implies that something is unfairly given preferentially to one group vs. another.

Unschooling is seen as unfair by many as a group of students who are given the opportunity to "not do school" ( or by those hating unschoolers as "uneducated by choice"). This, in a society where education is known to be compulsory.

I wish society didn't contribute to the distortion of the real meaning behind terms. Fear undoubtedly plays a role as does prejudice in one form or another.

Self-directed learning can work for all children. The individualization of education can also be a goal for traditional school students. I can envision schools eliminating arbitrary age-organized grade levels and pre-set curriculums and implementing student-led goals and mastery of chosen subjects.

Anonymous, I appreciate your comment here about terminology. Most people who use the term "unschooling"--including, as I understand it, John Holt, who first started using it--don't particularly like the term. However, nobody has come up with a good alternative. Self-directed learning is a good term, except it includes those who are in Sudbury type schools as well as "unschoolers." For the purpose of this study we wanted to focus just on home-based self-directed learners. We could have used that term--"home-based self-directed learners," but it is long and would get awkward. I have to admit also, that there is one sense in which I like the term "unschooling." It is accurate. Unschooling is NOT schooling--it's not traditional schooling, not homeschooling, and not Sudbury schooling. The fundamental decision made by families who take this route is that they are not going to "school" their children. I think one reason the term has stuck is that it is accurate. Nothing else describes the family decision so clearly. -Peter

The origin of unschooling came from Ivan Illach's book Deschooling Society, in which John Holt then coined the term. I say this because so much gets lost over the years or gets changed by misuse of words. Personally I prefer the term autodidactic, but we all have our faves. Thank you for the exchange I just read. It was nice to read the points brought up by everyone in this thread.

You know, I think the first time I realized that my unschooling education had more of an impact on me than I previously gave it credit for was one time in college. I was taking a Japanese history course as an elective, and the professor had studied Japanese history & culture in grad school.

The moment came when I realized that I had read a lot of the books she had read in grad school when I was 12-13 years old. When I was around 12, I began to have interest in Japan, so, as I had done with many other subjects, I vowed to read every book in my public library's Japan section, and it took a while, but I did it. I hadn't touched those books for years, as my interests turned to the Japanese language and literature after that, but I remembered a lot from reading those books which I was able to use in the class, more than from any college class I ended up taking.

A part of grad school seems to be reading a lot of books on the same subject, to build a foundation of knowledge about it. Interestingly, that's not too different than what I did back then. I think it was John Holt which said something like "The difference between a good student & a bad one is that the good student waits until after the test to forget the material" & I found that largely true.

Two weeks after the end of classes one time I wrote out everything I remembered from each class. To my horror, I had forgotten 90-95% of what I had "learned" per class. I mentioned this to some of my classmates the next semester, and it was completely normal for them. That was just how things were to them. In that case, I thought, college was more like a parody of learning. You spend all this time in a classroom supposedly learning new things, and yet at the end of the course, only the 10% (if you're lucky) of the material which was useful or taught in a way which mattered will stay with you. I got As because I was one of the few students who wasn't burnt out (or less so than the others, near the end), but in the end, not much that I learned there really stayed with me besides some of the projects. I ended up doing an interdisciplinary degree focusing on web design (graphic design + web development) so I could have as many project based classes as possible.

And yet I could tell you just about everything I did in about (conservative estimate) 75% of my classes, on a per class, per day basis, even though it has been a number of years. However, I may just have a very specific memory, so I'm not going to generalize about the school system and what a few other people I know may or may not remember.

I think the real answer here is that different people remember in different ways. In addition, people go into majors that they really don't want to be in, and thus remember less, but think they should. So in reality, you're positing a theory that has a number of other variables in it that are integral to the conclusion, yet those are nowhere to be found.

WOW! Thank you so much for doing this survey and big thank you to all who participated. Not long ago I was a mother scared to let go of curriculum to let my child follow his passions. I was reading unschooling books and had this internal desire for my son to have the time to work on what he wanted to learn, however couldn't quite get out of his way.

It is funny how there can be an internal struggle with this, at the same time I knew all the unschooling sounded right I just couldn't let go of the sense of responsibility that I felt to make sure he completes certain curriculum. The more I dictated how he spent his day the more we would fight or he would get to a point of pushing back. I realize we weren't happy and this was not how I wanted to spend out time.

I think fear is a huge controlling factor for parents that think unschooling or self directed learning sounds good, but don't make the decision for their own family. They are afraid to let go because they feel like they aren't doing enough if they do give their child the time and space to pursue their own passions. Also the feeling of keeping up with the neighbors who are doing hours of homework every night can leave a parent felling like their child isn't doing enough. This article is great to help parents overcome some of their fears.

Thank you for sharing and informing parents about alternatives to education.

Thank you for this comment, Anonymous. Did you see my series of posts on our previous survey--the survey of parents in unschooling families? This one, on challenges, is quite relevant to the point you make her. -- http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201204/the-challenges-unschooling-report-iii-the-survey
-Peter

So many of the comments from the participants ring true for me. I, too, was unschooled from Kindergarten on, was very self-directed, and had very little trouble adjusting to college life. Nearly all of my first-year friends in college were entirely baffled by my success, as their high school study habits did not translate to college and their motivation was depleted from 12 years of traditional schooling.

I was fortunate to have advisers for my BA education who recognized my skills abilities and trusted me to make my own decisions regarding my education. I was also fortunate to attend an institution where the requirements were made fairly clear, which allowed me to navigate them on my own.

I have not been so lucky for my master's degree, but ultimately it is a learning experience like any other. My extended time finishing my thesis has given me opportunities to expand my career skills beyond what the program initially offered me. The struggles I've encountered here, I believe, are also giving me the chance to develop skills to navigate similar settings that I am likely to encounter in my chosen career path, as well.

I think the problem with the whole concept is that some things I learned I didn't enjoy learning but needed to learn. I started studying biology on my own at age 8, far beyond what school is teaching. I am also a natural speed reader. This is a problem when it comes to spelling, and I really had very little natural ability in math. Self directed, I'd have ignored both completely which would have limited my success in schooling, which is not inconsiderable (3 advanced degrees).

I may have "succeeded" to a good degree, my IQ puts me in the top 1%, but my knowledge of the world and even some basic abilities would have been limited.

My guess is for every "unschooler" who does well and didn't seem to need the system, there are far more who "failed". Most people lack the motivation, and intelligence to drive their own education.

Your last comment is essentially based on what you know of yourself and the general population (not unschoolers). It does not take into account the basis of the unschooling concept as a whole. There is an actual term describing the process of coming to understand the concept - "de-schooling" one's thoughts - and it applies to all walks of life as well.

Unschoolers tend to trust this instinctually, and unless you explore the concept long enough or are raised with it you might not understand how most people do NOT lack the motivation or intelligence to drive their own education but rather are *taught* throughout the years to ignore that instinct.

I am not unschooled myself and I think I recognise in your comment the assumption that we pick up that certain things need to be learned, regardless of usefulness. It's a mindset. You say "things I learned I didn't enjoy learning but needed to learn"... My guess was that is that if you really needed them you would learn them really quick and not suffer from motivation.

A couple of examples from my experience - I never studied Czech at school, but when I went to live in the Czech Republic, I quickly learned a decent amount of the language and can communicate in it better than in the languages that I did do at school. I didn't do much Biology at school, but as Psychology student and then teacher it became useful to learn it. I picked up a textbook and learned the stuff in a couple of weeks that our school pupils typically do over a year.

I think it would be similar with your example of spelling. Self-directed, you might have ignored it at first, but would have come to a point where you were highly motivated to learn it and would have done so much more rapidly than you did when schooled in it as a child.

Peter:
I ran across your book "Freedom to Learn" randomly at the library, and subsequently inhaled it. My husband was "unschooled" as a child. That is to say, he never set foot inside a classroom prior to college, (and no formal "homeschooling" instruction). And while he did extremely well academically in college, he felt very out of place socially, and felt that he spent most of his college career hanging around with (excuse my terminology) "thugs and losers" because he didn't know how to navigate the world socially. He also had no idea that he was extremely smart, as he'd literally never had any context in which to evaluate his own abilities. Today he is one of the brightest, most capable people you will ever meet (and I'm not just saying that because I'm his wife!).

Anyway, because of his struggles with college and his feelings of being "alien", he has always felt very strongly that he wants to send his own children to "real school." This may sound naive, but until I read your book, I knew nothing about un-schooling or the free school movement.(Neither one of us did.) I've always marveled at his ability to retain information (even things he learned decades ago), but it sort of never occurred to me that it might be a result of the way he's always learned things (following his passions).

We now have 2 young children (both under the age of 3), and are beginning to think about how we will educate them (or rather, how we will facilitate their educations). It has been tremendously helpful to both of us to realize that there are other unschoolers out there, and to read about their experiences. I love the idea of sending our children to a Sudbury school, but I fear that may be geographically impossible for us, as the nearest one is about 400 miles from us. I just wanted to thank you for your work and let you know how much I appreciate you giving me new ways to thing about the education of my children. Hearing the experiences of other unschooled / free schooled children is very helpful to help me put my husband's experiences in a bit more context.

In retrospect, I shouldn't have used the term "thugs and losers". The point I was trying to make was that he hung around with people that he didn't particularly like or enjoy, but he felt that he had NO skills that would help him relate to people he did enjoy and whom he had things in common with. He felt very helpless socially and that became the standard by which he judged his un-schooling experience (which was otherwise positive).

Laura, thank you for this interesting story and comment. Unschoolers tend to roll their eyes when asked about "socialization," because they get asked it so often. Most respond that the social experiences of their children out of school--where they interact freely with people of all ages--is more valuable, and more "real-world"--than the kind of socialization they would get in school. However, I think the concern is a good one. There were a few people in our survey who felt socially isolated as children. I think it is important, if one is to unschool (or homeschool) to be sure that it will be possible for your children to find playmates, preferable a good number of them over a range of ages. -Peter

My husband grew up in a very remote place, and he just didn't have a lot of a lot socialization, particularly with peers. He has overcome this challenge now, (and is great socially), but he had to learn many of those lessons in college (and beyond), rather than in elementary school! I think the task for us is to realize that we could take the wonderful things from his unschooling experience, and change the ones that weren't so good. I am grateful to read that being socially adept is not such a problem for many unschooled children.

Cheers and thanks again for shedding more light on this subject. ~Laura

and remember too that this is the case for some children who went to school all of their childhood. They can still be isolated, have no friends and struggle socially. I know of people like this who like your husband had to learn those social skills later on in life. Being with lots of children 5 days a week doesn't mean you will learn good social skills and I would even say that school often does the opposite!

Thanks for this, it is great to read their experiences
even though we are in the UK , We are unschoolers, my son is 11 and came out of school age 8, my daughter is 5, nearly 6 and has never been to school.

I was wondering if it would be possible to show a randomized list of the colleges and universities attended by the survey respondents? I understand privacy concerns and the dangers of becoming hung up on school names but I think it would be non-invasive and informative to see the range of universities unschoolers attended, beyond vague "selective liberal arts school" categories.

We didn't ask for names of colleges and universities, but many did mention them anyway. Here are the ones mentioned by name:: McDaniel, Bennington (2), Marlboro (2), University of South Carolina, Earlham, Portland State, Evergreen State, Rochester Institute of Technology, U. of N. Florida, Cornell, Burlington College, Goddard College, Stephens, UCLA, New College of Florida, University of New Mexico, Glasgow School of Fine Arts, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Texas State, Mt. Holyoke, Florida Atlantic University, Prescott, St. Mary's, Oregon State, Open University, Indiana University, University of Southern California.
-Peter

I'm a 34-year-old grown unschooler who attended a 4-year liberal arts college and later completed a professional graduate program in history and library science. I now work as a reference librarian at an independent research library. I spent the first seventeen years of my life learning outside of institutional education, then eight years meandering through college part-time while working and pursuing other activities. I worked for two years between undergrad and graduate school (quasi-self sufficient working minimum wage retail, living at my parents) then moved to Boston for graduate study and at that point became economically self-sufficient. I married another former home/unschooler (she attended public high school, but homeschooled before that) and we remain in the Boston area working in the library field.

I was fascinated by how familiar these observations seemed to me. I segued into college through part-time coursework at the college where I eventually metriculated. I was able to do this because my father was on staff, so I had tuition benefits and could register as a non-degree-seeking student. Once I established a strong academic record at the college level, they let me in as a degree-seeking student on the strength of my college record, with minimal documentation of previous study. While I got my feet wet my first semester with a first-year writing course it quickly became clear I could hold my own (as a seventeen-year-old) among college seniors in 400-level courses. I eventually graduated summa cum laude in History and Women's Studies.

I did have to learn, like others here, how to prioritize and not over-work on every assignment; in the early years burn out during the semester -- even with only one or two courses -- was a constant issue. I always had stronger rapport with faculty rather than students, focused on learning rather than socializing with peers. Since I attended college in the community where I grew up I already had an inter-generational social network to maintain and on the whole didn't make strong social connections with peers at college ... though I remain close to several faculty mentors.

Formal schooling and I never really got along, emotionally; our personalities were incompatible! And I was very happy to break off the relationship upon finishing my graduate studies in 2011. But at its best, college and graduate school did provide me with the resources and colleagues to continue the philosophical explorations and practical pursuits my unschooled childhood had encouraged me to discover and develop. And, yes, I would say that my vocation as a librarian is directly connected to the skills and self-knowledge fostered in the home-based learning life.

I talked at more length about the way an out-of-school childhood has shaped me in 2010, when interviewed by Idzie of "I'm Unschooled. Yes, I Can Write."

I would be curious -- perhaps I missed where to discussed this? -- how SES factors in to college preparedness within unschooled kids. Are your pool of respondents diverse in terms of socioeconomic background and other group identifiers like race, geographical location, parents' education, etc? One frequent argument that gets leveled against us unschoolers is that our way of life is inherently elitist; that our ability to skip formal schooling and still succeed in college is a factor of class status and social privilege. Do your findings speak to this issue at all?

Thank you for these thoughts and the link to Idzie's interview of you. Concerning your question about SES, we did not ask any questions about that in this study. My impression is that most of the respondents would be somewhere in the broad middle class. A number of the respondents indicated that they worked their way through college, or had scholarships, which would suggest that at least they were not from wealthy homes. In our previous survey of parents in unschooling families, we did ask about their careers and found a wide range--blue collar as well as professional careers. A few said that it was something of a financial struggle to live on one paycheck, as the mother was not working, or working only part time, in order to be home with the kids. The first report of that study is here: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201202/the-benefits-unschooling-report-i-large-survey
-Peter

Thanks for this blog, Peter. Your articles are very interesting. I first read about "unschooling" about a year ago, and I have learned much since then. (However, I, like some others above, prefer the term "self-directed learning".) I find myself in agreement with this philosophy, although I am unfortunately past the age where I see it for myself.

My only struggle with this idea is the issue of college. Since this article is about college, I thought it would be best to post my comment here. I have looked into the issue, and I commonly read about self-directed learners who have gained admission to prestigious colleges. You mentioned in your post here that a sizable percentage of these people completed a bachelor's degree. However, these articles usually seem to be vague. For instance, a commonly mentioned route is attending community college and using the transcript to obtain admittance to a higher-level university. However, when I attended college, I did not recall any option by which you could be admitted without a high school diploma. You could, of course, get a GED, but those seem to be viewed as a lower-level certification than a high school diploma. (Please note that this idea is still relatively new to me, so I may still have some of the traditional thinking, including that of "higher" and "lower" education achievements.) Thinking that things may have changed, I did some research on the websites of some community colleges, and I found that all the ones I sampled still require a high school diploma or a GED. I have also read that ones which do not require any sort of diploma for admittance may not award any degrees until a GED is obtained, even if the student does well in the course. (Illogical, I know.)

So, my question is, how exactly did these self-directed learners enter these colleges, including very prestigious ones, without any sort of diploma despite the requirements listed on their official websites?

Good question, AP154. It turns out that even colleges that say they require a high school diploma often do not, when it comes down to it. Except in a very few cases of state-run colleges, where there are state laws about it, colleges are free to accept whomever they choose. They may say that a high school diploma is required, but when faced by a bright kid, who has done interesting things and really wants to got here, they make an exception. Also, while Community Colleges may require a diploma to register as a full time, matriculating student, they don't require it for taking a course. Essentially anyone can take courses at most community colleges. Many of the unschoolers took courses at their local community college when they were of high-school age, and then they used their grades in those courses as means to get into a four-year college.

Another point that many fail to realize is that there is no standard definition of a high-school diploma. Some "unschoolers" simply make their own diploma, and they back it up with a "transcript" that describes their various activities and accomplishments. Self-directed learners tend to be very creative, and they are creative in making diplomas or substitutes for diplomas.

There are also services like "Beach High School" --http://www.beachhigh.education/landing/ -- That produce diplomas for self-directed learners based on the things those learners have done.

You mentioned a few colleges in a previous post. Were the methods you mentioned actually used by some self-directed learners to enter these colleges? I would be greatly interested if you could, in the future, post an article which is dedicated to describing specific methods self-directed learners have used, rather than generalities. The names, of course, could be kept anonymous, but I believe that a definite description of specific methods would settle the doubts of some people who are unsure about the issue of college, myself included.

In Part I of this series of four reports on the study, I list the various routes by which the unschoolers got into college and indicate how many used that route. In this, Part II, in the sample of vignettes, I include specific ways by which particular individuals got into college. It's not quite clear to me what more you would want. I could, in theory, go through the entire list and say how each got into each college, but I'm not sure that would be terribly useful.

From this blog, I recently discovered the Alternatives to School website, which you apparently contribute to. The page about college mentions colleges which actively seek out self-directed learners. I have read about these colleges before, but no names are ever mentioned. Do you know of any?

Hi AP154,
I forwarded your question on to my colleague Gina Riley, who has done some research on this questions. Here is her reply:

"Most of the Ivies actively recruit homeschoolers...and colleges that have been mentioned in the past re: accepting and embracing unschoolers include Bard, Goddard, Evergreen State, Antioch, Prescott, Green Mountain and Sarah Lawrence. Brown, MIT, Harvard, and Williams are also places were unschoolers have been accepted and embraced."

But, I wouldn't limit a college search to those schools. I think most college admissions departments these days look favorably on self-directed learners--especially those who have a history of showing initiative and achievement.

It's wonderful to read how well they got on at university and how different their experience was to their university peers, but I would be interested to know how old they each were when they were doing their course, because this has a major influence on your university experience. I was not unschooled and left school at 16 but then went on to do a BSc aged 28. I would report many of the same findings and contrast (with fellow students) as your unschoolers, due to my age and maturity and life experience before going to uni. Eg I had more respect for my lecturers, a greater desire to work hard, less desire to party etc.

Your point fits with my experience as a college professor. I generally found that the most engaged students, who seemed to get the most out of their studies, were somewhat older students who had had some real life experiences under their belts.

Most but certainly not all of the grown unschoolers in our study, who went to college, went at the typical college age. I think they behaved more like older students because, as unschoolers, they also had quite a lot of real-world experience under their belts and had made an adult decision to go to college. It wasn't something they felt they "had" to do because others expected it of them.

So it seems, according to this limited survey, that unschooling basically means you'll go into a liberal arts program at the best. No doctors, pilots, pharmacists, dentists, lawyers (well, one), optometrists, engineers, accountants, businessmen, veterinarians, social workers, architects, paramedics, or even trades that require extensive training.

And I'm saying this as a parent who is homeschooling 5 kids in a mostly self-directed way. Yet I do expect all my kids to achieve a high level of competence in a profession that gives back to the society around them.

I believe there is a balance between self-direction and working together with others to ensure we have a functioning and efficient society.

If everyone in our society unschooled, we would not be sitting in the comfort of our heated homes, driving around in cars, and discussing these topics online, being relatively healthy and all, since all these things require being dependent on people who have a level of training that unschooling parents are unwilling to push their kids to achieve.

Immigrant parents, on the other hand, know first-hand the value of this training that our society provides and sacrifice everything to get here, working their whole lives in low-paying jobs round the clock, just to be able to give their children the ability to excel in the very professions I mentioned above. No wonder then that their children are filling these positions and enjoying the comfort and success (yes, life success as well) that higher education and training provides.

And I'm saying this as a child of immigrant parents. I have been "back home" and know exactly what a nation with little or no educational system looks like. I highly doubt anyone reading this would prefer THAT system over what we have here, flaws and all.

Interesting observation about the distribution of professions, though perhaps it is an effect of the small number of personal anecdotes presented in this study. In my experience, having grown up 'unschooled' in a community of 'unschoolers', while many pursued primarily liberal arts education in college, this wasn't the rule at all. I'm an MD myself, and other (now adult) professionals raised in my community include social workers, nurses and engineers. My parents did not push me to achieve an advance degree, but I and some of the others raised in my community certainly have pushed ourselves. There was nothing about 'unschooling' that deterred us from pursuing professions requiring advanced or technical training.

We have been a mix of homeschooling as defined in the article and child-led activities/learning. I have often considered trying unschooling, but I wasn't sure if it was the best fit for us. I appreciate these articles, but often articles I read about unschoolers and eventual college attendance seem to be primarily humanities/liberal arts majors. I'd be interested in learning about personal experiences/cases of unschoolers who make it into competitive select colleges in STEM majors which are often highly impacted and difficult to get into. Does formal academic rigor, GPA, and test scores matter more then? Are there any cases of these? I am not valuing any major less or more than any other, but I would like to hear more about STEM majors. There is only one example of an individual going on to study science in your article.

The next post in this series, on employment of the grown unschoolers, contains data on those pursuing STEM careers. Interestingly, half of the men, but a far lower percentage of the women, had gone on in STEM. See https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201406/survey-grown-unschoolers-iii-pursuing-careers

I'm a young adult who was unschooled and I'm planning on attending college. I was wondering if you could provide a list of majors that unschoolers have chosen in college? It could help me decide on a major I could pursue. Thank you.

I burned out and dropped out of college hoping to decide what I wanted to do before going back for more training (which I had no clue how to afford). Eventually I took a job I had no qualifications for. I was hired because no one else wanted it. I was scared but motivated to learn so I wouldn't be embarrassed and tossed out. So I was unschooled for the job and taught myself to use the tools of the trade. Soon I was organizing the work in ways that no one schooled to do the job had. I didn't have the dexterity of others but I didn't take the frequent breaks (hare and tortoise) and my methods basically allowed me to run through a backlog of work that had never been gone through before.

I asked to use the time to expand my methods for the benefit of the company. Denied. Instead, I was put in cobweb filled file room and asked to clean it up. The files became teachers to me and I expanded what I could do for the company even though that was not the reason for the task. The reason was one I would encounter often -- punishment for productivity.

Soon I was loaned out to help handle other backlogs in other departments. When someone was fired creating a company crisis, I was moved into the position. I'm a timid person but I was able to keep people from using old methods that only got in the way of the work. Then the company hired an assistant for me. He was a college graduate. He couldn't do the work or help me in any way. He couldn't even go into the shop to get information for me because he wore such nice clothes. So they sat him in a corner and had him do whatever he wanted. I found out he was earning 3 times my pay. I asked how he was worth it. The answer was that they could tell clients that a degreed engineer was on the team. I was the team. Some people in the company actually had tuition reimbursement but, since the company paid, the company saw no issue with not allowing the person to go to classes when the work load got heavy. Few ever got a degree with the company's help or despite it.

I was working for an hourly rate, but I wasn't authorized to work the overtime needed to get required work done, so I worked 80 hours a week -- 40 doing what I was told & 40 doing what I knew needed done. As long as the extra 40 hours was self-directed, I didn't burn out. When the company insisted I work all 80 hours for them and allowed me to get paid for some of it, I started to burn out. Unhappy and not caring if I was fired, I started doing things I knew needed done despite orders not to do them. When the customers cornered the company and demanded things they wanted, I was called into a meeting to explain why those things hadn't been done. I spread out all the information showing that the work had been completed but told them that customer input and feedback would be appreciated. There was all the work I was told not to do by the company. The customers tried to make suggestions but decided there was nothing they could do to improve on what they were seeing. The company was off the hook and I was dismissed from the meeting.

The company hired new administrators. When I went in to my new boss's office to ask for permission to order supplies, before I could say a word, he told me he knew why I was there. He said he knew that everyone in my department was paid about 3 times what I was and that I out performed all of them. He said I could walk into any other company like ours and get double the pay the first day. BUT he promised that when the current wage freeze was over in 3 years he would personally see to it that I was given a ten cents and hour increase in pay. Yes, the man was that stupid. I went back to my desk and wrote my resignation. The company negotiated a 3 month increase in pay for me to get them through a crisis and so I could train 3 people to do my job. At the end of the year, I was to pick up my yearly profit sharing check and part ways with the company. After all but a few details of the work was finished, I was let go a few days before the profit sharing check was issued which basically cost me the negotiated pay increase. The company then sent their new employees to my house to continue training them because the company figured I owed it to them. I did help them because I cared about the work and about other employees that would be out of work if the project crashed and burned, but when I was told that I owed it to the company, I told them to ask any questions they had now because they wouldn't be welcomed back.

To boil this down, despite the results I achieved, I had a career of being dismissed as someone with no credentials. I generally got paid far less than people that didn't care about the work or couldn't do the work. The lack of standing also led to my work being butchered by people trying to fix it without understanding it. I actually went to job interviews where I went down the list of credentials required for a job and showed how only a few of the requirements couldn't be picked up in a few minutes of training. I would ask if their company was willing to lose a very talented candidate over a list of requirements that weren't worth having. The interviewers would smile, agree, cross those requirements and usually hire someone else who benefited by me getting the requirements edited.

The biggest boost to my career was meeting a head hunter in a "job shop" (consulting firm), that was a huge liar. I heard him on the phone describing an electrical engineer he had that he could send them. The next minute, he told me he had an assignment for me. I told him that, if it was for a job as an electrical engineer, I didn't have the electrical sense to keep my tongue out of a light socket. He said he was sending me for a different position in the same company. I got to the company and the job was for an electrical engineer. I was scared to death of being found out. A few weeks later, I was training people. When I was sent out as a PC Board designer, I apologized to the man I was sent to see and explained I knew absolutely nothing about the work. The more I told him what I didn't know, he would counter it by saying he would put me in an even more technical position. He seemed elated. I asked why promote me before I even worked there when I explained that I know nothing about the work. He said that he gets people with degrees in the field all the time and it take him 6 months to a year to convince them they know nothing so he can start directing them in ways useful to the company. He was the best boss I ever had. But the companies always had issues and there would be company wide lay offs. The temps were the first to go. And I didn't have the credentials to be hired in most of the places I ended up working. It finally ended up with me being asked to become my own company with me as my only employee so I could work for a company I had dozens of patents with. Still, in one case, I successfully completed a project that a major engineering firm said was impossible. The engineering firm charged over $20,000.00 for nothing and I logged 6 hours for $300.00 to provide a working 3D model of the assembly. I was called into an office and told that the company felt I was being overpaid and asked me to reduce my rate. I pointed out the example I just cited and said I thought they were getting a great deal at $50.00 an hour and so few hours to actually meet the goal. Their response was that I was comparing myself to a large company with a facility and degreed engineers. I countered with "Is a loaf of bread worth more if it comes from a factory than from a residential kitchen?" So nothing changed.

So, I am unschooled only in the way that I learned on the job. I benefited (or the companies I worked for did) due to the fact that, had I had a formal engineering education, I would have known that my ideas were impossible and not tried and achieved what was BELIEVED impossible. I would have used my formal training and applied the normal techniques and created things that were not innovative or better than anything else. It is hard for me to promote lack of a solid education but I know it worked for me. A rigid tree breaks in a strong wind. A flexible tree will bend and survive. The down side is getting the job you want in a world that is impressed with certificates and credentials. And I sympathize. Anyone can make undocumented claims. A lie can sound identical to the truth. So getting the job you want, the pay that seems fair and maybe even some respect would be nice -- not the respect that means you get buried with work that people don't trust to anyone else. It is not fun being complemented by being handed piles of work while a dozen better paid co-workers hang around at the coffee machine sharing stories about their lives.

One other issue is that a non-standard employee is a hard thing for an employee to cope with. If someone fills a unique place in the company and quits, how do they find a replacement? If you had a car that had a special component in it that made the car far superior to other cars, but that component was rare, what happens if it breaks? Better to have a car made of cheap, easily replaced pieces. A car that continues to run in a consistent way is better than a car that performs spectacularly for a while before it breaks down and can't function. It is a force in the work world that increases the demand for cookie cutter employees with certified cookie cutter skills.